


Per Ardua ad Astra

by SugarSpiceandCurseWords



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, PTSD, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, When in doubt rely on Leia Organa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8192983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarSpiceandCurseWords/pseuds/SugarSpiceandCurseWords
Summary: Direct follow-up to Episode VII.  Rey and Finn are adjusting to entirely new lives.  Poe is adjusting to a new, and not entirely welcome, outlook on his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written months ago, so it's late enough that the general concept has been done (beautifully) by a number of people already; I hope the fandom can tolerate one more version. To make the timeline work, you have to accept the concept of a large gap of time (a week or two) between Rey kissing Finn's forehead and her departing on the Falcon -- so her line "We'll see each other again" is more of an expression of faith in his recovery than a farewell. Which is not really how I interpreted it on screen, but it was the only way to keep Rey in the picture for this story, so I'm going with it.
> 
> If desired, this could be read as leading toward Poe/Finn or even Poe/Finn/Rey. You'd have to squint a lot, but I'd be fine with it.
> 
> This is my first posted fanfic in about ten years and my first written one in about three. So go easy on me, is what I'm saying.

Adrenaline is still singing in his veins when Poe Dameron settles _Black One_ onto the tarmac at the D’Qar base. _That’s for the Hosnians,_ he thinks with vicious satisfaction. It isn’t a victory; he’s painfully clear on that. Yes, Starkiller Base is gone, and this system is safe for now. He’s been mentally tallying the cost in Resistance lives on the return flight, though, and his brain keeps stuttering over the enormity of it all.  


When the engines spool down to an idle hum and the canopy pressurization releases with a soft hiss, he pulls off his helmet and just breathes for a moment. Only for a moment. Then he’s up, pulling himself half out of the cockpit to sit on the canopy rail and watch the rest of the starfighters limp into their assigned parking. He stares at an empty space until Snap’s T-70 settles into it, then shifts over to another until Iolo does the same. Then Jess, and Bastian, and Karé, and Nien, and Ello—  


—Right. Ello’s will stay empty. As will Niv’s, and Maekka’s, and… Then the ships stop coming, and everyone who will be coming home is already here, and there are so, so many empty spaces.  


There’s some commotion around the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s gangway: a medical team. Poe takes the boarding ladder in two oversized steps, just in time to see the transport speed past him, its patient nearly obscured under the barely-controlled choreography of the medtechs. “…spinal damage…” is all he hears, but it’s enough to bring him up short.  


Because in the middle of that bedlam he caught a glimpse of his flight jacket.  


He takes three long strides to follow before everything whites out for an instant.  


“Easy, Commander.” Reptilian hands close around his forearms, steadying him. Poe blinks hard and refocuses on Goss Toowers standing in front of him. “Get your dirtside legs first.”  


It’s not a gravity issue, he knows, and he’s pretty sure his crew chief knows as well. But he’s grateful for the polite fiction. “I’m all right, Goss. Thanks.”  


“You did good out there, sir. Glad to have you back.” Goss releases him and offers to take his gear. Poe surrenders his helmet and tugs off his survival vest, taking another couple of steps to follow the transport before halting, uncertain.  


He turns back to the flightline, where the remaining pilots of his squadrons are trickling toward each other, elation and loss warring on each of their faces. This is his place, at least for a time. Finn will be cared for, and he’ll be there soon enough to make sure of it—but these are his people, and if they feel even a fraction of what he’s feeling now, they need their leader.  


Poe walks toward their loose circle, and they all seem to hover, waiting for a cue as to how they should react, what they should do. He claps Nien on the shoulder, squeezes Kare’s elbow, and says to Snap, “You going cross-eyed? That first pass was a mess.”  


“Kriff you, boss,” Snap replies with absolutely no heat, and slings an arm around Poe’s neck. Jess barrels into him from the other side, and they all melt into one continuous mass of life.  


After a minute or two, Poe lifts his head away from someone’s arm so his voice has some chance of being heard. “This is all the debrief that matters: we’re still here. A lot of good people aren’t. I’ll deal with the rest tomorrow. Let’s go get drunk.”

 

Rey steps back from Finn as the kind-faced doctor bustles around his cot, readying him for treatment. The doctor, Kalonia, surely has never seen either of them before, yet she doesn’t mind explaining to Rey what she means to do for Finn. None of the medical staff are confident enough to say that he will absolutely survive the procedure, and Rey appreciates that honesty. Still, she meant what she’d said a moment ago: she truly believes that she’ll see him again, and he’ll see her. It’s not quite the same as all those years waiting on Jakku. That was dogged, desperate willfulness; this is faith.  


She lingers in an anteroom of the medbay while Finn is taken into surgery, entirely lost for ideas as to what to do with herself. Chewbacca is with General Organa, for reasons that are obvious even to Rey, and she knows no one else on this planet.  


Except for the droid who rolls in an hour later, skidding up to her and chittering away.  


“Well, hello to you too,” Rey says, warmth blossoming in her chest. “I’m glad to see you safe.”  


BB-8 responds with a string of binary that briefly encapsulates the airborne battle to destroy Starkiller. “Your master’s alive?” Rey realizes. “That’s brilliant. Finn will be so pleased.”  


Wiggling from side to side, BB-8 trills at her. “It was good of him to send you here,” she tells it. “I hope he’ll join us soon. I’d like to meet him.” The astromech gives her a name, a little complicated to translate from binary. “Dameron Poe? Is that it?”  


“Other way around, actually. Bee learned it backward by accident years ago, but ended up keeping it that way in the database because my old flight lead used to say ‘Dammit, Poe’ so much that the squadron figured it might as well be my name.”  


The pilot standing in the doorway is…not precisely _standing_ in the doorway, but rather leaning against it in a manner that suggests he could use the assistance. Rey frowns. “Are you all right?”  


“As all right as I’m gonna be tonight.” He straightens, and regains a little more of a military bearing. “Let’s do this properly. I’m Poe, and you must be Rey.”  


She studies him as she accepts the handshake he offers. His dark hair is falling into his eyes, and his flight suit is half unzipped and tied around his waist, revealing a plain black undershirt that looks stiff with dried sweat. There are fading bruises and cuts scattered across his face and arms, making her recall how he and Finn met. He’s not the picture she had in her head of a heroic X-wing pilot back when she’d crafted her little rag doll on Jakku. Somewhere behind his eyes is a glimmer that suggests he might be exactly that, under other circumstances. But not today. Today he mostly looks exhausted, and a little skittish, the welcoming smile notwithstanding.  


“I am,” she says. “I was—they said they’re going to repair Finn’s spine surgically and then put him into bacta treatment.”  


“Good. If they think he’ll be stable enough for the tank, that’s a good sign.”  


Rey hesitates. “The doctor said it was going to be a partial immersion. Just his back. I assumed that was because he didn’t need to be fully immersed, not that it was risky, but—”  


“No, I’m sure you’re right. Full immersion isn’t that big a shock to the system. It’s just kinda creepy.” Poe gives a shudder that she suspects is exaggerated for her benefit.  


“I take it you’ve had some experience?”  


“Oh, I’m a connoisseur. A misspent youth plus a few years of military service will teach you the subtle differences in smell between Core-grown bacta and the synthetic stuff they make out here. Either way, waking up in a tank of it is a sure sign that your day is not going as planned.”  


He selects one of the three chairs against the wall and sprawls into it with a gracelessness that makes her reexamine the sheen to his gaze. “You’ve been drinking alcohol.” She hopes she doesn’t sound accusatory; he has every right.  


“Not nearly enough, but about as much as I can afford right now.” Poe scrubs a hand through his untamed hair. “Had to get my squadrons started on decompressing. Today was…not a day anyone should end alone.”  


“And now you’ve come here for the same reason,” Rey points out quietly. He glances up, a bit surprised, but nods.  


“None of us should be alone, but especially not Finn. Or you, actually.”  


Now it’s her turn to be surprised—that anyone would be thinking of her feelings in the aftermath of such chaos. “I’ve always been alone. It’s having company that’s strange for me.”  


“Do you mind me being here?”  


“No, of course not.” The reply is automatic, but it turns out she means it. “Finn told me about you, how you liberated him from the _Finalizer_.”  


“Liberated, huh?” Poe quirks an eyebrow. “I would have said it the other way around. But I guess we saved each other.” His eyes stray toward the doors, in the direction of their friend—yes, friend is the word. She cares for Finn, and so does Poe, and maybe that means the two of them can be friends as well. “Have you had anything to eat since you landed?”  


It hadn’t occurred to her to think about how much time had passed since her last meal. Her hesitation lasts long enough that he reaches into his pocket and tosses her a ration bar. Rey catches it against her chest, uncertain. “I don’t have any way to pay—”  


Under other circumstances, the astonishment on his face might be comical. “Pay? For that crime against the culinary arts? Kriff, Rey.” His hand moves toward her arm, but he pulls it back. “Even if you hadn’t just taken on the person I despise most in this galaxy all by yourself—that’s not how we do things here. There’s not an automatic expectation of repayment for everything. We help each other. Everything evens out sooner or later, or at least close enough.”  


It’s a nearly foreign concept to Rey, but a magnificent one. Offering a grateful smile, she nevertheless asks, “Won’t _you_ be hungry?”  


The pilot’s lips curve upward in a humorless smirk. “Right now I don’t think I could even keep it down.” He shakes his head, looking aged beyond than the thirty or so standard years he appears to be. “I just—I’ve always been able to keep my hope that we can actually make a difference in this fight, no matter what knocks us down. I almost lost that on the Destroyer, but then Finn was there, and… If he doesn’t make it through this, I might finally lose it for good.”  


“He will.” She begins to unwrap the ration bar, which smells pleasant to her despite his disparagement. “I can feel it.”  


Poe casts her a sideways glance. “That a Jedi thing?”  


News travels fast on this base, it seems. “I don’t know. Maybe.”  


“Good enough for me.” He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. Rey chews her food, and they sit in silence for a measureless time.

 

For the first little while, he’s aware, but he sees and hears nothing. Memory returns in tattered bits, disjointed and sharp-edged. A fight in the snow, in a creeping darkness. A looming power he couldn’t overcome.  


_Rey._  


She was hurt. Did she live? Did _he?_  


The first sounds filter into his mind as if he’s hearing them from underwater. Voices, indistinct but certainly different in tone from the ones he’s accustomed to. He’s not on Starkiller anymore. He’s safe; he’s almost sure of that.  


He tries to move, to open his eyes, and doesn’t quite make it. Possibly that should alarm him, but it doesn’t, because whatever focus he can summon now coalesces on his hands, suddenly warm. Someone is holding them. Two someones. He recognizes the smaller hand encircling his right one, tough skinned and strong though delicate. He’d held it before, much to her annoyance. The one gripping his left is new, larger and yet gentler. Could it be—?  


“Hey, buddy,” says Poe, and there’s a smile in his voice. “Come on back. Everything’s okay.”  


The relief is overpowering, and it energizes him to drag his eyes open. After a few seconds and a couple of long blinks, he’s looking up at the first two people in the galaxy he’s ever considered to be his friends.  


“Don’t try to move too much,” Rey warns. “Your back is still healing.”  


Finn’s throat doesn’t seem to want to function, but he manages to form the word “Where?” and Poe interprets it correctly.  


“At the Resistance base on D’Qar. It’s been about—I don’t know, a day since Starkiller was destroyed.”  


“Closer to two,” Rey says, but Finn’s brain is stuck on the very concept of Starkiller’s destruction. They’d done it. That absolutely mad plan he’d helped concoct had actually worked. If it were anyone other than these two telling him, he wouldn’t have believed it.  


“How?”  


“How did you get here?” Poe tips his head toward Rey. “Thank this one here. She took on Kylo Ren.”  


“ _Or_ if you’re asking how Starkiller was turned into dust, ask _this_ one,” Rey deflects back at the pilot before Finn can even grasp what he’d said. “Quite the shot.”  


Poe doesn’t seem to want to linger on that. “Of course, if you’re asking how you got back here, logistically, then neither of us can claim credit, because that was mostly—”  


“Chewbacca,” Rey joins him.  


It’s as if they’ve known each other for longer than the day or so that have passed. Have they been here, together, waiting for him, this whole time? The shadow of stubble on Poe’s face and the tiredness in their eyes suggests that might indeed be the case.  


They wanted to be here when he woke up. To Finn, that gesture is an amazing gift.  


He wants to smile, thinks his face might even be moving in that direction, except there’s something else skulking in the back of his mind, warning him that this isn’t really a happy ending. For one thing, it’s not an ending at all. He doesn’t have the first clue where to go from here, or if he even has the choice—or the ability.  


“You’re going to recover,” Rey informs him, and he’s thankful that it sounds more like a fact than a command. “I don’t think they’ll let you out of bed for a bit, but you’ll be walking again soon.”  


It’s good to hear, though it doesn’t ease his mind. After a moment, he’s finally able to assign a name to his disquiet. “Solo,” he mouths.  


Rey’s bright eyes seem to shutter. “He was a good man,” she says. “Chewbacca and General Organa are—they’re staying close to each other right now. There were many good people who didn’t come back.”  


Her gaze flicks over to Poe, whose jaw has tightened. Finn remembers then that Poe isn’t just a stellar pilot but also the leader of the entire starfighter corps. Some of the good people who didn’t come back were his pilots. Finn thinks that maybe someday he’ll tell Poe about Zeroes and Nines and Slip. It’s not the same, exactly, but it’s something.  


For all that, though, they’re here, and free. They get to keep living and trying to figure things out for at least a little while longer. It’s more than he had any right to expect just a few days ago.  


Finn shifts his head so that he’s looking at a tall cup sitting on the side table. His throat feels coated in sand, and if he could just get a drink…  


Rey follows his gaze and reaches for the cup. “I’m not sure how to keep this from spilling. You’re not supposed to sit up just yet.”  


“Hang on—they usually have straws around here.” Poe yanks open a couple of drawers, rummaging around until he finds what he’s looking for. “Aha.”  


At the sensation of cool water against the back of his throat, Finn closes his eyes in bliss. He still feels raw, but he needs to at least get this one word out. “Thanks.”  


When his eyes open again, his friends are smiling at him, and he senses their relief as clearly as his own. What will happen from here on is anyone’s guess, but he’s on his way back.

 

The first couple of nights aren’t so bad.  


Poe doesn’t even see his bunk for much of either night; first he’s looking after his squadrons, especially the new pilots for whom this cataclysm was their first taste of combat, and after that he tells himself that Finn shouldn’t wake up alone. Never mind the fact that Rey’s there at least as much as he is—but she just took on the _dark side_ , for kriff’s sake, so he talks to the quartermaster about securing her a spare bunk and chases her off for a few hours. She needs to sleep, but also he wants her to feel she has a place here, just as he wants Finn to feel the same soon.  


He catches a quick nap every so often, against the wall in the medbay or on the half-collapsed couch in the aircrew briefing room. His actual bunk, though, feels…different somehow. Confining, maybe. So he finds other solutions. He’s always been good at that.  


And if he hasn’t really had a normal night’s sleep since before Jakku, it’s not worth whining about. He made it back. So did Finn, and Rey, and BB-8. Plenty of others weren’t as lucky. Those who are left still have work to do.  


General Organa raises an eyebrow when he volunteers to take the first recon mission available after Finn wakes up. “Did Kalonia clear you?”  


“After Starkiller? I came back without a scratch.”  


“Without any new scratches, you mean. You were only provisionally cleared for Takodana, and the two semi-atmospheric engagements you’ve led since then can’t have done your ribs any favors.”  


Attempting to argue with Leia Organa is a fool’s errand. Poe grew up on old Alliance war stories, and so he’s never been that kind of fool. He looks down at his boots, searching for a way to explain that doesn’t say too much, doesn’t put too much on her. They’ve barely acknowledged the fact that whatever fractures he wears are the handiwork of her son, either by direct action or by command, and that’s just fine with Poe. She has enough to worry about.  


“I could really use a calm flight like this,” he says quietly. “Finn’s healing, Rey’s with him, so I don’t…” _They don’t need me,_ he doesn’t say. Donning what he hopes is a charmingly self-deprecating smile, he offers, “You know I’m more trouble than I’m worth unless I’m in the air.”  


The general’s assessing gaze doesn’t waver or ease, and for a moment he’s afraid he has miscalculated. The last thing he needs is another person taking inventory of the contents of his head. Even her.  


All she says, though, is this: “If you’re medically cleared, Commander, the mission assignment is your prerogative. Take care of it and have your two-ship ready in three hours.”  


With a grin, Poe comes to attention as she departs, knowing she finds that formality both inescapable and irritating, especially from him. He comms Snap to gear up and meet him on the flightline in two hours, because nobody flies recon like Snap Wexley.  


And he has every intention of getting a med check. Truly. It’s on the tip of his tongue when he walks into the medbay. Then he hears a delighted voice call out “Poe!” and turns to see Finn sitting up in bed for the first time—and he’s so pleased to find his friend looking stronger that he immediately pulls up a chair and, consciously or not, shoves any other reason for his visit aside.  


“This is progress,” he says approvingly. “They letting you have real food yet?”  


Finn’s nod is enthusiastic. “I tried about five new things just for breakfast. There were these balls of bread, and when I took a bite there was this fruit inside that was a little bit sweet and a little bit tart—it was fantastic. Rey just went to the mess to see if there are any more.”  


The pure joy he’s deriving from these new explorations is infectious. Poe’s smiling broadly before he even realizes he wants to. “Tell her to bring you back a flora-cake next time. Trust me. Heaven on a plate. Only thing the mess hall really gets right.”  


“Can you stay a while? Someone brought in a holochess set, and that’s about the only game around here that I know how to play.”  


“Can’t today—sorry. Got a recon mission. Need to map the stellar shift caused by the Hosnian system attack and deliver aid to any ships that might have been caught on the edge of the blasts.”  


Finn nods, accepting. “You think there might be more who made it out?”  


“Red Squadron found a few yesterday, got ‘em linked up with Republic provincial leadership. Corellia’s setting up a refugee camp.” Poe shrugs, knowing how feeble both the hope and the effort have become. Finding a few thousand survivors from a system of billions—it’s not nothing, but it feels like it might as well be.  
“It’s good you’re going, then,” Finn says, resolute. “When do you expect to be back?”  


“Pretty late. We’re trying to map three sectors on one run, so we’ll be going for maximum fuel efficiency. We’ll probably sneak back in just before airfield blackout for the night.”  


“Come visit after you land?” The former stormtrooper sounds a little like a child waiting on a parent—like Poe himself, anticipating his mother’s returns, decades ago. “Even if it’s late. Just so we can see you’re okay.”  


Poe could point out that the med droids are on the same network as the airfield control droids and could get them any updates they might need. Instead, he concentrates on how Finn’s concern seems to warm him in ways he hadn’t known he was cold. “Of course. I’ll see you tonight.”  


It’s a 2.5-hour hyperspace hop to the edge of their planned search grid, and he dozes for some of it. BB-8 gives a soft chime to alert him to the approaching shockwave at about the two-hour mark. “Thanks, Bee.” He cinches his restraints tighter and toggles his comm. “Two, Lead. Ready to drop?”  


“On your mark, Lead,” replies Snap.  


“Three, two, one, mark.”  


The pull of hyperspace falls away, and Poe grits his teeth as the wave buffets _Black One_ like a child’s kite. General Organa had been right, as usual; his ribs could have done without this. No getting around it, though, quite literally. The explosions of the five planets that comprised the Hosnian system had begun at five discrete points, but they would merge and propagate outward in all directions nearly indefinitely, crossing many flight paths for years to come.  


“Hell of a legacy,” Snap says a half-minute later, when they’re through the worst of it.  


Poe agrees, but isn’t up for discussing it further. “Copy that. Prep for jump two. Three, two, one, mark.”  


The two starfighters streak toward their predetermined starting point, a Republic marker beacon that had once been the checkpoint for transports approaching Hosnian Prime. The second drop from hyperspace is far smoother than the first, but the vista is…soul-crushing.  


Poe has always found the quiet of non-combat spaceflight to be peaceful, but this kind of quiet is unnatural. There was life here, not long ago, so much of it that it could barely be contained on a planet. All gone now.  


He’d served on H-Prime for a time, soon after getting his commission in the New Republic Defense Fleet. His old base, along with everyone and everything in the entire _system,_ is gone, not only destroyed but obliterated. No traces left even for future historians to piece together. All that remains is what others off-world have saved, what others remember.  


For the next four hours, he hits his waypoints methodically, falling into the detachment of well-practiced routines to keep from screaming at the utter desolation. At one point, sometime in hour three, Snap thinks he has a read on a disabled cruiser, but it’s beyond help, having vented the last of its oxygen through a gash in its hull hours or even days ago.  


After that, there’s nothing—no debris larger than his own craft, and no life signs save him and his wingman.  


By the time they make the jump for D’Qar, once again scheduled with a midpoint break to weather the shockwave, even BB-8 sounds despondent. “I don’t have an answer for you, Bee,” Poe tells his droid quietly. “Hate, fear, obsession with power…it’s not logical. Organic brains do strange things. Don’t know how you put up with us sometimes.”  


General Organa is waiting in the hangar when they land. Poe suspects she hadn’t wanted them to broadcast their total lack of mission success over an open channel. He hustles through his post-flight checklist and turns _Black One_ over to Goss’s expert care, not wanting to keep the general waiting.  


She intuits the truth from his expression as he approaches. “Don’t start,” she warns, eyes narrowing. “Your shoulders aren’t big enough for this. There isn’t a damned thing you could have done to make today go any better.”  


_I could have been strong enough to kill Ren when he was standing in front of me,_ he thinks, but of course he can’t say it.  


Leia Organa has seen this happen before, he knows—to her own homeworld, no less. How does she stand it? Her own _son,_ for gods’ sake—if someone like her can be powerless against a Force so strong it can rip her own child from her, what hope do the rest of them have?  


He can’t say that, either. Instead he lifts his chin and replies, “We’ll go out again tomorrow. And we’ll keep putting one foot in front of the other.”  


She doesn’t smile, but her hand comes up to grasp his arm. “Your mother’s son, through and through,” she says, and as always he feels a flare of both pride and loss. “Go get some rest.”  


He will, but first he has a promise to keep.

 

Rey has just finished setting two food trays down on the table in Finn’s room when the door opens for Poe. Finn brightens, even though his friend is clearly tired and moving stiffly from hours in the cockpit. “You’re back! Not as late as you thought.”  


“Doesn’t take as long when there’s nothing out there to find.”  


Not sure how to respond to that, Finn is saved by Rey, who tries to offer her dinner to Poe. “I can go get another one.”  


The pilot shakes his head. “Thanks. I’m still settling back into gravity. I’ll go pick something up later.”  


“Doctor Kalonia says Finn gets to stand up tomorrow,” Rey informs him with satisfaction.  


That draws a smile out of Poe. “Outstanding! Another step closer to full strength.”  


“A small one, but yeah.” Finn was relieved to hear that he’d recover—of _course_ he was—but all the same, he’s wary of what will happen once he does. Rey seems to sense his hesitation, because her bright expression dims a bit.  


Poe glances from one to the other, aware that something has shifted. “Wanna fill me in on why this isn’t entirely a good thing?” he ventures.  


If there’s anyone he should be able to ask, it’s Commander Poe Dameron, bona-fide Resistance officer. So Finn steels his nerves and looks up. “Once I’m healed…what comes next? I mean, does the Resistance need me to provide more intel, or am I…done here?”  


Poe’s face goes nearly blank as he roots out the actual question being posed. “That will be your choice, just like before,” he says carefully. “You don’t think…That’s not _why_ we’re taking care of you, Finn. You know that, right?”  


He wants to believe that, and may even be making progress toward believing it. Still, it’s alien to him. “The First Order wouldn’t have bothered,” he replies. “Complex treatments are a waste of resources. And I’m sure I can think of some useful information about them that I haven’t already given you. Tactics, for one thing.”  


Rey isn’t fazed by this, possibly because medical treatment on her little corner of Jakku couldn’t have amounted to much, but the color seems to drain from Poe’s features. “ _Stars,_ ” he murmurs, staring down at the floor while he searches for more words. When he drags his eyes back up, his gaze is hard. “Both of you need to understand something. Yes, the Resistance is grateful to you. Immeasurably grateful. And yes, you’re both potentially incredible assets to us. _Neither_ of those would have to be true for you to be welcome here, for us to—use _resources_ to help you. Seven hells, I can’t even—I hate that you could even _think_ that.”  


He sounds hurt, almost, and Finn wants to apologize, even if he doesn’t know what he’d be apologizing for. One thing he _is_ figuring out is the depth of the differences between them. Of the three of them, Poe is clearly the eldest, but in some ways he’s the most naïve. He has his cause—has grown up with it, if some of the stories the medtechs tell are to be believed—and can’t seem to fathom the lives of those who haven’t shared it.  


“Okay,” Finn offers. “If I’m sticking around, though, I want to at least try to earn my keep at some point.”  


“The same is true for me,” Rey adds. “I’m…not sure what my next move is from here, but if I stay, I want to contribute.”  


Poe looks like he’s casting about, uncertain of the ground beneath him. “We have the map now,” he says, halfheartedly. “We can find Master Skywalker.”  


Rey tucks her hands under her biceps, making herself appear smaller. “Is it likely that he wants to be found?”  


As soon as she says it, Finn knows that Poe is the absolute wrong person to hear it. The man _suffered_ for that map, and the possibility that it could have been for nothing is more than he ought to bear. But the pilot merely shakes his head and fixes a clear-eyed, if weary, gaze on each of them in turn. “I meant what I said,” he tells them quietly. “Whatever either of you do from here on out is your own choice. I hope you’ll both stay, but I want _you_ to decide. No obligation, no gratitude. Just freedom. Otherwise there’s just no point in anything.”  


“I hope I’ll stay, too,” Finn says, wishing he could do better. “I’m just…not ready to make any choices at all just yet.”  


“That’s fair. Part of being free is the right to feel however you feel without apology.” For a moment, a playful glint appears in Poe’s eye. “Just don’t make any decisions before we have a chance to throw a proper down-day party. You have not lived until you’ve seen what my squadrons can do to the mess hall when motivated by strong drink.” He picks up his helmet from the chair by the door. “I’m beat. Can I stop by in the morning? Got to see this whole standing-up thing for myself.”  


Finn can’t help but smile. “I’ll save all my feats of strength until you get here.”  


“I’ll hold you to that. Good night.”

 

 _It feels like heat, like threads of fire weaving through his skull. Every memory is pain, and he recoils from each one until his tormentor has led his thoughts right down the path he is to follow. In the blackness he feels bone-deep shame, for his weakness, for his failure, and he almost hopes—_  


BB-8’s worried screech brings Poe sharply awake, already half upright, breath stuttering in his chest. His ribs twinge, and he wraps a bracing arm around himself until he can manage a full, proper inhalation.  


Slumping back down on his bunk, he scrubs his hands over his face, wishing he could do the same to his mind. There hasn’t been a lot of time to dwell on what happened on the _Finalizer_ , which suited him fine—but he spent most of today boring fruitless, desperate holes in the sky, trapped with his thoughts, and by the end those thoughts were threatening to smother him.  


He’s been a soldier for over a decade, first as strictly a pilot for the New Republic and then as both starfighter corps commander and, increasingly these days, as an all-purpose operative for the Resistance. He is in no way, shape or form unaccustomed to missions going south without warning. That one, though, didn’t just fall apart—it detonated. He can feels its shrapnel in his brain and isn’t sure he’ll ever find every last shard.  


The childhood stories he’d been told about the Force had been somewhere between a fairy tale and a holy text. He knew of the dark side, of course, but he’d never experienced it; his only brush with the living Force at all had been his mother’s tree, so vibrant and graceful and so much more alive than the native foliage surrounding it. Even after her death he’d found beauty and solace in its branches, and maybe he’d started to forget the fact that _balance_ demanded equal power be given to something terrible, or whatever the old masters had believed.  


He’s found the dark side now, that much is sure, knows its power in ways he hopes no one else would ever have to know. What frightens him—what truly terrifies him beyond measure—is not knowing what had been taken, what had been altered…whether that man or monster could waltz right back into his head at any time to pick up the scraps he’d discarded before.  


Hesitantly, BB-8 burbles a query.  


“It’s not the crash, buddy,” Poe tells it quietly, wondering how to explain. “When the First Order took me, they…messed with my head a little. It’s probably gonna be a while before I get a solid night’s sleep.”  


Another multi-toned question.  


“No. It’s my issue to deal with. Don’t bother anyone else with it. I mean that.”  


His is the best damn droid in the galaxy, for all sorts of reasons, but at the moment it’s because BB-8 has learned to interpret his state of mind with enough accuracy to select just the right type of comfort. A gentle string melody issues from the astromech’s small speaker, a Yavi folk song his mother used to sing when the storms came and tethered him to the house for days.  


He reaches down and strokes BB-8’s dome. “Thanks, Bee.”  


He should close his eyes, try to get back to sleep. And maybe he’ll be able to, eventually, if…  


Rising, he pads over to the small window and slips the latch open, letting the cool damp air settle on his skin. D’Qar isn’t so different from Yavin Four, even if one’s high summer is more like the other’s late fall. Right now it’s close enough. He pushes his datapad off to the side of his desk and sits down on the surface, drawing his knees up. With his head back against the duracrete wall and his eyes closed, he can almost feel the whisper-flies swirling around as he and Dad haul dirt or tinker with the speeder’s engine.  


He wishes he could talk to his father, _really_ talk. But one of the inevitable drawbacks of the Resistance is the need for comm security. They can record holos and launder the transmissions through a half-dozen different relays to mask their location, but real-time conversations are limited to mission-critical needs. He can’t put… _this_ in a holo. And even if they could talk, Dad’s health isn’t great, and the last thing he needs is to worry any more than he already does.  


He recalls his father talking about fear, on a quiet spring evening most of a lifetime ago. When asked about what he feared most, Kes Dameron hadn’t hesitated to answer. _“That it was all for nothing.”_  


_And it may have been…because you failed to protect the legacy we left you._  


Poe starts, the thought so unexpected that he’s not even certain it’s his. It sure as hell doesn’t sound like something his father would say.  


Which doesn’t make it untrue.  


He shuts the window. The sudden chill doesn’t ease.  


“Bee—” His voice cracks, and he tries again. “That’s enough music for now.”  


_Better?_ the droid beeps hopefully.  


_If only._ “Yeah, buddy. Thanks.”

 

“What’s going to happen next?”  


General Organa regards her with a calm that Rey knows better than to mistake for serenity. “To the Republic, or to the Resistance?”  


“Both, I suppose.” When bidden, Rey takes a seat in front of the general’s desk. “Might they become one and the same?”  


“I’m open to that, if not hopeful.” Organa folds her hands atop the desk. “The various governments of the Republic’s member planets haven’t even been able to elect or appoint new senators yet. It’s difficult to blame them, since anyone who steps up will have a target on their back. Until a new Senate quorum can be established, the Republic can’t even officially declare war. Any New Republic Defense Fleet forces based outside the Hosnian system are likely digging in to defend themselves and not thinking about counterattacks at this point. Still, we’re sending comms to our NRDF contacts with offers of alliance. In the meantime…only time will tell as to who now believes that we were prescient to act against the First Order threat—and who believes we provoked it.”  


It hadn’t occurred to Rey that the Resistance could be faulted for the unfathomable tragedy of Starkiller. When she says as much, the older woman’s lips twist in a humorless smile.  


“There is always another point of view.” She leans forward. “I believe it would go a long way toward uniting a great number of uncertain worlds if we could show them that the Jedi can still be a symbol for good in the galaxy.”  


“You’re going to try to bring Master Skywalker back.” Rey isn’t surprised; it’s an incredible chance, one that Poe Dameron risked his life—and many others gave theirs—to make possible.  


“I was hoping I could convince you to do that for me.”  


This time she’s taken aback. “But I’m… You’re the leader of the Resistance.”  


“And I have been his sister far longer than I’ve been that. If he’d wanted to find me, he would have. You, on the other hand…” Organa gives her a soft, genuine smile. “You’re what he’s been seeking, even if he doesn’t know it.”  


Rey’s head is spinning now, from what she’s learned, from what’s expected of her. This isn’t her life—this isn’t at all what she’d expected. All she’s ever wanted is for her family to find her…  


…and maybe, in some fashion, that’s what this is. Or could be.  


“Take some time to consider it,” the general says. “We can afford a few days. Please give some thought to the possibility that this could turn out to be what you’ve been seeking as well.”

 

“Wow.” It’s not much of a response, but it’s all Finn has at the moment. “She wants you to go?”  


Rey gives a small shake of her head and reaches for the bread on her meal tray. “I suppose it makes sense, in a way. But it’s a bit overwhelming.”  


They’ve fallen into a pattern over the past couple of days, which is comforting to him; routines are something the First Order excelled at. Poe visits in the mornings, before his duty day begins. Rey visits between his rehabilitation sessions, and again in the late afternoon, when she stays until Poe brings all three of them dinner. The room is meant for two patients and only has one, so Rey is perched cross-legged on the empty bed with her meal in front of her.  


Poe never says anything about their respective eating habits, except to explain a food that stymies them, but Finn is pretty sure he and Rey don’t eat like the rest of the base does. He’s accustomed to bland, nutritionally optimized foods, and Rey—well, he won’t presume, but the odds are good she’s used to…less. Here, food isn’t unlimited, but it’s close, and it’s riotously varied. It’s a constant reminder of how far he is from what passed for a home. But it’s incredible, and now that their bodies have adjusted to it, he and Rey both finish heaping portions, sharing from each other’s dishes just to experience as much as possible. Slouched into a chair against the wall, Poe merely nibbles at a biscuit with a tolerant gaze.  


Finn swallows a bite of a roasted vegetable. “Do you think he’ll come back with you?”  


“I haven’t a clue. I don’t know if he’ll agree to train me, or help the Resistance, or if he’ll just chase me off.” Rey tucks a few strands of hair behind her ear.  


“If he’s still the person the stories say he is, he’s got to help.” Finn can’t imagine it going any other way. “Regular soldiers can fight the First Order, but against Ren… the Resistance is going to need a Jedi. And more would be better.”  


“I don’t know.” Poe’s voice is low, and his eyes are fixed on a point somewhere on the opposite wall, his jaw set in a hard line. “I’m starting to think messing with the Force isn’t such a great idea.”  


Rey shakes her head. “I don’t see as I have a choice. It’s there now, in the back of my mind, whether I want it or not. I have to figure out what to do with it so I don’t…lose myself.”  


It’s an unsettling thought, and Finn doesn’t feel equipped to follow it very far. He deliberately sets it aside, glancing over at Poe. With a nod toward his friend’s meal tray, he asks, “Poe, you gonna eat that?”  


The pilot blinks and glances down at the dish of…well, Finn doesn’t know what it’s called, but it’s something warm and mushy and a little sweet. With a soft huff of amusement, Poe transfers it to Finn’s tray. “I couldn’t eat that if you paid me.”  


“How is it that you survive if you don’t like half the food here?”  


“I like _real_ food just fine. This doesn’t qualify. Sometime we’ll get off this rock to a planet with some culture and I’ll show you.” His expression is thoughtful—maybe thinking about all they’d have the freedom to do if the First Order were truly to fall. Finn’s never considered what that would be like. He thinks he might spend some time considering it now.  


But Poe’s on his feet almost immediately, stacking the empty dishes. “I have to turn in. Got a hop tomorrow.”  


“A hop?” Finn repeats.  


“A mission. Scout escort. Time for good little pilots to be tucked up in bed.” He flashes a smile, though it’s clearly for show.  


Rey frowns. “You flew today, didn’t you?”  


“That was just training. Didn’t leave the system.”  


“And yesterday,” she continues pointedly.  


Poe scrubs a hand through his hair. “Not sure what you want me to say here. When duty stops calling, I’ll stop answering.”  


When he moves toward the door, she places a soft hand on his arm. “Just making sure you realize you don’t have to win the war by yourself.”  


This time his smile is softer, more genuine. “Message received. Good night, you guys.”  


“Stay safe,” Finn replies, because he has nothing else.

 

Temmin Wexley is nearly done preflighting his X-wing for his scheduled recon when Blue Squadron returns from its escort mission. There had been intel reports suggesting that a First Order splinter group had established a work colony in the abandoned Trade Federation facilities on Geonosis, and a Resistance transport carrying a scout team had departed early that morning flanked by four X-wings.  


And all five are in the landing pattern now, for which Snap gives a brief prayer of thanks. There are a couple of scorch marks, though, on _Blue Three_ as well as _Black One_.  


Had there been a flight in the past two weeks that Dameron _hadn’t_ been on?  


As Snap watches, Jess Pava vaults out of her cockpit the instant her canopy is open, yanking off her helmet and striding across the tarmac to her flight leader.  


“I’m not going to let this drop,” she informs him, her voice tight with disapproval.  


“If this is how they say ‘thank you’ on your planet, Testor, I’m gonna need a cultural refresher,” Poe says, sounding indifferent.  


“You shouldn’t have done it! I _had_ him on turn radius!”  


“Maybe you did. My instinct in the moment said that wasn’t a sure thing.”  


“So a not-quite-sure thing was worth a suicide dive?”  


“Do I look dead to you?”  


This is not, in Snap’s estimation, a typical tone for a debrief. “What happened out there?” he asks, approaching.  


Poe doesn’t turn his head. “Recovering the scout team got a little exciting. TIE squad was patrolling. Nothing we couldn’t handle.”  


“Exactly my point,” Jess insists. “It _was_ handled. But Lead here decided to play the conquering hero and pulled a Maqarie switchback _in atmo_ to pick off the one on my tail.”  


Snap raises his eyebrows. A Maqarie is _not_ a maneuver to be practiced under gravitational effects.  


“It worked,” Poe says, unyielding.  


“But it didn’t _have_ to! You took a bigger risk than you needed to take.” Jess is starting to look less angry and more…troubled. “And it wasn’t the first time, either. Maybe not even the first time today, but definitely not the first time since Starkiller.”  


This turns out to be the wrong move, apparently, because Poe’s entire demeanor shifts. He leans forward, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Watch it, Pava. I’m assuming the general put me in charge for a reason.”  


Just the fact that he’s pulling rank at all, let alone like this, is enough to make Snap step in. “Guys, can we focus on the fact that everybody came home in one piece?”  


“This time,” their commander says grimly, and Snap starts to see what the problem might be. He’s been flying with Poe for a couple of years now, and between Takodana and Starkiller, they’ve never before suffered such losses under his watch.  


“Poe, we get it,” he says quietly. “We’re all feeling the holes in the squadrons, and it’s worse on the leaders. But you’re not responsible for—”  


When Poe finally turns his gaze to Snap, the shadows under his eyes make him look almost like a different person. “I don’t think you get to tell me what I am and am not responsible for.”  


“I just think you need to step back and get out of your own head,” says Jess, sounding flustered. “It’s—This isn’t _you_ , boss.”  


Spinning back toward her, Poe takes two steps and gets right in her face, his fury just barely in check. “You have no kriffing _idea_ what’s in my head. And you are dis _missed_.”  


Jess is headstrong, but not foolish. She presses her lips together in a thin line and snaps to attention. “Yes, _sir_.”  


While she’s executing an about-face, he’s stalking off in the other direction. “Poe, come on,” Snap calls after him. “Can’t you talk it out in the debrief?”  


“Just did,” Poe tosses over his shoulder.  


Snap exhales, resigned. “Whatever you say, boss,” he murmurs, and heads back to his fighter. Their day might be done, but his is just getting started.

 

The water coursing over him is tepid at best; the utilities on base are no one’s first priority. Poe stands under the shower head anyway, hands braced against the wall, willing himself to get back under control. Jess didn’t deserve any of what he’d thrown at her, and both she and Snap seem to have noticed that he’s off his game, but none of that makes it any easier to figure out what to do next, how to get out of this spiral.  


_I will take what I want from you._  


“Like hell,” he hisses. From outside the fresher, BB-8 chirps a query. “Nothing, Bee.”  


What did the people on Hosnian Prime think when they saw that massive blade of fire tearing through space, aiming straight for them? He thinks he knows; he’s felt it inside his head.  


Some of his—’interrogation’ seems like an insufficient word, but he doesn’t have a better one—is indistinct in his memory, and that’s what eats at him. He’s clear on how he was manipulated into recalling BB-8 and the map, but…what if that isn’t all Ren took?  


An awful, horrifying thought has been lurking in the back of his mind for days, and now he can’t seem to escape it. He shuts off the water, scrubs himself harshly dry, and shrugs into his clothes, the idea stalking him for every moment along the way.  


There’s no way he’s going to sleep tonight; no point in even trying. Might as well do something useful, like clean out the oil filter on _Black One_ ’s auxiliary power unit. Goss will get to it, of course, but he’s got plenty of other tasks, and Poe likes working on his girl when he can. When he reaches for the grease-stained coverall he uses for maintenance, though, BB-8 objects in no uncertain terms.  


“It’s not that late, buddy,” he says. BB-8’s sharp retort makes its disapproval plain. Poe sighs. “Fine. Tomorrow.”  


Later, it will occur to Poe that this should have set off warning bells in his mind. BB-8 has been with him through the absolute best and worst of times, and never until this moment has he even considered lying to the droid.  


But that’s exactly what he’s just done. Sitting down on his bunk, he swings his legs up and reaches for the blanket. “Go ahead and start your charge cycle. I’ll see you in the morning.”  


With a resigned beep, the astromech rolls over to its charging station and powers itself down for the night.  


Poe gives it about half a minute before sitting back up and jamming his feet back into his boots.  


There are only minimal lights on the flightline after dark, for security purposes. He stands for a long moment, gazing up at the stars, the only place besides the Massassi forests that he’s ever felt at home. But even if not’s obvious to the naked eye, he can’t make himself forget that the starscape is different now—one system utterly destroyed, another altered beyond recognition—so he sets a lantern on the broad case of Black One’s starter generator and begins the mind-numbing process of removing the oil filter for cleaning. He probably should have brought the coverall, if only for some protection against the damp chill that settles over the area at night, but he won’t be out here long—it’s not a big or complex task, so before long he’s going to have to come up with something else to occupy himself.  


It’s always been soothing to work on his machine, to take care of her the way she does for him out in space, but it isn’t enough of a distraction, not tonight. It can’t shut off the ominous hum in the corners of his mind, making him relive every dark moment he’s ever had, reminding him that Kylo Ren is out there and Poe was and is utterly powerless against him. He never thought he could be a liability to the Resistance, always figured he’d do whatever it took to get himself out of the equation if it came to that—but if Ren can reach in and just make him _feel_ anything and everything, what else could he make him do?  


He trembles, violently, and his fingers fumble with the fasteners for the now-spotless filter. It’s hard to focus, but he manages to get them back into place and close up the cowling. Then, finally, when a familiar sensation creeps in, he realizes what all these cold, sick feelings that have been clawing at him since the _Finalizer_ are masking.  


He’s “G-locked” himself before, in training, maneuvering in a way that pulls the blood away from his brain and steals consciousness away for a few seconds. That’s what he’s feeling now, the slow, gray tunneling of his vision, and he sits down hard on the generator case next to the X-wing, dropping his head between his knees to wait it out.  


But it doesn’t abate, and he can’t see his chrono, and he has no idea how long it’s been, and he can’t stay out here forever. “Help,” he mumbles, but he didn’t bring a commlink and no one knows he’s out here and everything feels so very cold.  


_Get up. Get inside._  


So he staggers to his feet  


and then his heart pounds  


and everything is buzzing and hot  


and when he takes a step he plummets into the haze.  


Consciousness flees so fast that he doesn’t even feel his head strike the edge of the generator.

 

The security patrol walks the X-wing flightline once every hour during the night. The two guards do a manual sweep for motion, but their droid is in maintenance, so there is no one to point out the stationary life sign beside _Black One_ , unmoving from hour to hour.

 

When BB-8’s scheduled power-up sequence begins at 0630, the droid’s first order of business is to report to its master. It is pleased that no disturbances triggered an early activation during the night, unlike previous nights. However, DameronPoe is not in his quarters and the temperature of his bunk matches that of the room, indicating that no human has made use of it recently. BB-8 runs a statistical profile of possible alternate locations for its master in order of probability, and sets out.  


The mess hall gives a zero result, as does the briefing room and the medbay. It is not quite dawn, so the flightline is unlikely, but BB-8 propels itself out into the cool mist anyway.  


DameronPoe has always provided BB-8 with the best available components, so its thermal sensors are top of the line. It registers an anomaly beside _Black One_ with a 94-degree core temperature, when no equipment in the vicinity is powered up to provide any variation from the 45-degree atmosphere. Upon further investigation, visual sensors discover a standard-issue flight boot protruding from behind the starter generator.  


Beeping worriedly, BB-8 rolls across the tarmac and nudges its master once, then twice. DameronPoe does not stir.

 

“Are we having a tactics briefing today or not?”  


Jess spreads her hands in surrender, looking up from her datapad at Snap’s furrowed brow. “It’s on the schedule for 0800, and usually he wants the two of us here a half-hour early to pre-brief. But I haven’t seen him yet.”  


Snap rests his hands on his hips, looking discomfited. “This is starting to get out of hand, isn’t it?”  


“We tried talking to him, remember? It went about as well as the last mission did.” But he’s right, and she knows it. Poe has been half absent for a while now, like he’s physically present but his mind is on the other side of the galaxy. It’s understandable after the events of the last month or so, but it’s particularly unnerving to see from their leader. Poe has always been the solid foundation of the group, his bright smiles and easy confidence holding them together through the rigors of seemingly endless war. If Starkiller shook Black Leader, the rest of them don’t have a lot of hope.  


“I wish Karé and Iolo weren’t out in the Outer Rim. They might know how to handle this better.” Or maybe they wouldn’t. Jess hadn’t served with the three of them in the New Republic Defense Fleet, but surely nothing in their NRDF days had been quite like this. She pushes herself up from her seat. “What do you think – check his quarters first, or the command center?”  


“Command center’s closer.”  


It’s relatively quiet in the large room this early in the day, with only a few officers assembling the morning intelligence report at the main station and a handful of droids performing administrative tasks. No pilots hanging around. Jess turns to Snap, about to shrug, when an alert tone sounds and the droids all snap upright, beeping a shrill string of binary.  


“Oh, dear,” says C-3PO, with even more concern than usual in his voice. “An emergency request has just come over the network for a medical team to the flightline. BB-8 reports that Commander Dameron has been injured.”  


Jess and Snap don’t waste any time confirming their course of action with each other. They both hit the doorway at an all-out sprint and make it to the hangar doors about twenty seconds ahead of the medical team. Said medical team loses another few seconds by looking around for its patient, while the pilots run straight to _Black One_ , skidding to a stop next to its nose.  


“Poe!” Snap drops to his knees and fumbles for a pulse. “Kriff, he’s freezing. Doesn’t even have a jacket on. Was he out here all _night?_ ”  


Not out of the question, if the drying blood pooled under Poe’s cheek is anything to go by. His chest is rising and falling, but in a shallow manner that seems…not good. “Force be with us,” Jess breathes, hitting her knees as well. Standing sentry beside its fallen master, BB-8 trills anxiously. “Thanks for finding him, Bee. What in hell was he _doing_?”  


“Talk to me, Black Leader,” Snap orders, gently patting his comrade’s face to no avail. “Come on, Poe, you can’t pull this on us.”  


“Get back here, boss!” Jess shouts, panic creeping into her mind. She’s seen him hurt before, but somehow this isn’t the same—as if he isn’t even there. The medical team converges then, politely but firmly moving the pilots aside.  


“Hypothermic,” reports the lead medtech, practiced hands skimming over the commander’s body to check for major trauma. “Head lac doesn’t look too bad. Not wild about his pulse, though. On three. One, two, three.”  


The medtechs roll Poe onto a stretcher and hustle him toward the doors. Behind the hangar, the sun has just broken free of the horizon.

 

Finn sinks back onto his bed with a satisfied sigh. Making a single lap of a not-overly-large room shouldn’t be such a source of pride, but he’s taking his victories where he can find them. Rey hops up to sit next to him, smiling. “Didn’t pull your back too much?”  


“No. A little, but it feels okay.”  


“Should only be another couple of days before you can get out of here, I expect.”  


At which point he’ll need to really figure out what to do with himself. Right now, he’s leaning toward sticking around and seeing where everything leads. He hasn’t even been outside this room in a week and already the base feels like more of a home than he’s ever known. If he—  


There’s a clatter in the main medbay, the sound of people and equipment moving all at once. Rey frowns and rises to investigate. When she peers out through the window, her face crumples into dismay. “They’ve just brought in Poe.”  


Finn’s up off the bed again before he can even complete a thought. “Is he okay?”  


Rey presses her lips together and gives a small shake of her head, uncomprehending.  


They open the door into hushed chaos. People are setting up monitors and stripping off clothes, and in the middle of it lies the man who struck the final blow on Starkiller Base. Except it can’t be him, because Poe Dameron is dynamic and invincible, and the still form on the gurney is…not.  


Finn swallows painfully at the sight. Pale skin darkened by stubble and bruises old and new, dark hair matted with cloying blood; it’s as if they’re back on the _Finalizer_ , but worse. When the medtechs cut away Poe’s ruined shirt, Finn sees that his ribcage is bandaged already—when did that happen? After Jakku?—and other, older scars lay half-hidden underneath. He even looks lighter, somehow, less sturdy. Almost fragile.  


Finn finds himself speechless, adrift. He’d thought Poe dead before, but never imagined him broken.  


“Warming blankets and a central line,” Kalonia directs, fingers dancing over a scanner’s control pad. She leans forward to clean and inspect the gash at her patient’s hairline. “You never do anything halfway, do you, Commander?”  


Her voice is fond but carries more tension than Finn would like. He looks at Rey, whose fearful, bewildered expression surely mirrors his own.  


Kalonia glances up. “All of you, out,” she orders. “Wait in Finn’s room if you must, but get out from underfoot.” That’s when Finn notices two of Poe’s pilot friends hovering in the outer doorway, BB-8 wavering behind their legs. The woman, Jess, opens her mouth to protest, but is silenced by a voice behind her.  


“You’ve been given an order, Blue Squadron. He’s in good hands.” General Organa steps past her and heads for Finn’s room, giving all four—five?—no choice but to follow. Finn’s back is starting to burn with the exertion of staying upright, so he returns to the bed. This time, when Rey joins him, she draws her legs up under her chin, winding herself into a tight ball of concern.  


“I don’t understand,” Finn says. “What _happened?_ ”  


“BB-8 found him out on the flightline, next to _Black One,_ ” Snap replies, taking up a position along the wall. “Looks like he hit his head, but…” It’s an incomplete explanation, and they all know it. Poe’s not clumsy, and there’s no reason for him to have been working on his ship this early. He hadn’t said anything about a mission today when he visited at breakfast yesterday. Then again, Poe hadn’t said much of anything at all yesterday, and in hindsight that seems relevant.  


No one speaks for a time. The pilots send occasional furtive glances toward their general, who has given no explanation for her presence. She doesn’t owe them any, of course. Truth be told, Finn’s still figuring her out.  


“He hasn’t been eating,” Rey says suddenly. When all eyes fall on her, she continues, “I thought I might be imagining it, since I haven’t gotten used to the idea of having food whenever I want it. But that’s why I noticed. He’s left behind nearly all of every meal we’ve taken together.”  


“Hasn’t eaten with us in the mess since sometime before Takodana,” Jess says.  


Rey turns toward her. “What is he like?” she asks. “Is he normally so…withdrawn?” Finn blinks at her, because that’s not how he sees Poe—but how well does he really know him?  


“No,” Jess responds without hesitation. “He’s usually got the fastest and biggest smile in the room.”  


“Except when we lose people,” Snap counters. “And we lost half the squadron at Starkiller. We should have known how hard that would be for him.”  


“The Starkiller battle isn’t what brought this on.” The comment comes from General Organa, which makes it an automatic truth. “Not completely, at least.”  


“Ma’am…was it Jakku?” Jess asks, sounding uncertain. “Did something happen to him there?”  


_Not a thing,_ Finn thinks bitterly. _He was only tortured for information._ But the general only says, “It’s his story to tell if and when he chooses.”  


She looks at Rey, who seems to understand, drawing further into herself.  


They fall silent again. Eventually the door opens and a med-droid rolls into the room. “Patient Dameron will recover with no permanent damage,” it reports, and Finn exhales, because he honestly hadn’t been sure. “His diagnosis is exposure, mild shock, and minor concussion, prompted by exhaustion and dangerously low nutrient levels. It is likely that his function has been suboptimal in some fashion for days. I will notify you when he is able to receive visitors. However, Doctor Kalonia has instructed me to convey to you that, quote, ‘loitering around here and not taking care of himself is part of what landed him in this mess, so don’t repeat his mistakes.’”  


“Guess that means we should go run the tactics briefing and then get lunch.” Snap pushes himself off the wall.  


Jess hesitates. “Another part of what landed him here is us being lousy wingmen and not realizing he was pushing himself to the point of collapse.”  


General Organa shakes her head. “He’s got rank on you, and it isn’t your responsibility to know what’s in his mind. If anyone was going to take him off the flight rotation, it would have had to be me. But apparently that bravado of his works fairly well on all of us. I won’t make that mistake again. Go. The squadrons are going to need more out of both of you for a while.”  


Finn feels like he’s still missing a few pieces of this puzzle, but the ones he has are making him feel uneasy and guilty, regardless of the general’s words. The first friend he ever had in the galaxy is hurting, and he has no idea what to do.

 

Rey isn’t sure whether it’s practicality, kindness, or both that prompts the medical staff to install Poe in the bed next to Finn’s, but she’s grateful all the same. She only knows him from the past few days of sharing the watch over Finn and from Finn’s own stories, which are tinged with a hint of hero worship. But what little she does know of him is difficult to reconcile with this.  


She remembers how it felt when Kylo Ren invaded her mind, how every nerve was exposed and burning until she realized she could fight back. Whatever else this Force gift means for her, it gave her that defense. Poe didn’t have that. If Ren did the same to him…  


Finn watches his still form with unabashed worry, his expression unchanging even after Kalonia assured him that his friend would soon wake. Rey moves a chair into the space between the beds, for lack of a better idea. BB-8 rolls back and forth from one to the other, as if pacing out its impatience.  


The doctor is as good as her word; it’s only a few minutes after she leaves that Poe’s eyelids begin to flicker. Rey and Finn take up positions on either side of his bed, in a bizarre reflection of the vigil she and Poe had kept for Finn, and for the first time she notices the healing scars around his wrists, where he must have fought against the First Order’s restraints.  


At last he drags his eyes open and seems to focus on Finn. When he opens his mouth, all that comes forth is a faint cough at first, until he swallows and tries again. “What’d I miss?”  


“A bunch of people losing their minds because of you,” Finn says. “How’s your head?”  


“Hurts.” His brow creases. “Why is that?”  


“Because you smacked it on _Black One_ ’s starter generator,” answers Rey.  


“Huh.”  


“What were you thinking?” Finn demands, sounding angrier than Rey believes he really is. “They said you’ve been taking every flight you can get, you haven’t been eating, you haven’t been sleeping—”  


“Bee is…exaggerating.” The pilot’s gaze is still glassy, but he attempts a faded smile. From the floor, BB-8 gives a sharp rejoinder.  


“BB-8 isn’t the one who told us. Your vital signs told us. You doing stupid stuff and passing out in the middle of the night where _no one could find you_ told us!” Finn breaks off mid-rant and glares at the droid, betrayed. “Wait, you knew?” The miserable beep he receives in reply only stokes his indignation. “You knew, but telling someone would have violated a master directive.”  


“There was nothing to tell.” It’s a transparent lie, given the weakness of his voice, but Poe’s expression is hardening. “It’s been…one hell of a month for everyone.”  


“You’ve got a weird set of rules,” Finn says. “You keep telling me it’s okay to feel whatever I feel and say whatever I want to say—that that’s what being free means—but it’s different for you?”  


“Finn,” Rey says quietly, recognizing that Poe is in no condition, physically or mentally, to settle this. She reaches for his hand, halting when he flinches away. After a moment, he lifts apologetic eyes to her face and sets his hand back down next to hers. She wraps her fingers around his, feeling a minute tremor there. “What he means is that you have a great many people who care about you, and you should let them.”  


Poe closes his eyes for a long moment. When he reopens them, he’s looking up at the ceiling and not at them. “I’m tired,” he murmurs, and it’s so strikingly true in so many ways that she wants to weep.  


“Rest,” she says. “Everything else will keep.”  


It isn’t long before his breathing deepens into sleep. Rey keeps a hold of his hand, not knowing how else to help. She’s hardly practiced in the art of sensing emotions, but despite his conscious denials, everything else about him is broadcasting distress to her.  


“When he was interrogated,” she begins, and then falters.  


Finn sits down on the edge of his own bed. “I wasn’t there. I found him later. I guess…it must have been bad.”  


“It’s a horrifying feeling to have someone reach into your mind. He’s not a man who can bear to lose control, and control is Kylo Ren’s currency. We can’t blame him for clinging all the more tightly to what he has left.” Rey meets Finn’s alarmed gaze and shakes her head. “You needn’t worry about me. I had the tools to fight on that level, even if I didn’t know it until that moment.”  


And that lights an ember of an idea. She does have those tools. She defended her mind against Ren, and she manipulated the guard. Maybe there is some good she can do with it as well.  


“I’m going to try something,” she says, tentatively bringing her free hand up and placing it against the unbruised side of Poe’s face. He twitches but doesn’t wake. Closing her eyes, she visualizes the great starscape that is the Force, focuses on the pinprick of light beside her, and pushes as gently as she can—  


—and she is eight years old and frozen with loss because her mother has always been the strongest person she’s ever known, and yet her mother can’t beat this—  


—and she is screaming in the cockpit of her X-wing because Muran _didn’t have to die_ , they’re not _helping_ anyone out here, the galaxy is crumbling piece by piece and no one will _do_ anything about it—  


—and she is proud of herself for not breaking even though every inch of her body aches, but that was foolish hubris, because then _he_ comes in and flays her wide open with a single thought, and she has no idea what he’s taken from her mind, what he’s changed, whether she’s even still herself—  


—and she is lying on the burning sands because she walked until she couldn’t, and then crawled until she couldn’t, and maybe it’s for the best because she isn’t sure she can live with the knowledge that the entire Resistance, everything her parents fought and bled for, might be wiped out by some scrap of intel ripped from her mind—  


—and she is back in her X-wing, trying to clear the after-shadow of a searing lance of energy away from where it has etched itself across her vision and struggling to comprehend that a government and billions of beings have just been erased from existence—  


—and she can’t bear to sleep because it’s never fully clear what is real and what is the nightmare and what is a living, pulsing remnant of _his_ violation—  


—and—and—  


Rey comes back to herself, gasping and trembling, hearing the shriek of the medical monitors and BB-8’s terrified squeal. Under her hand, Poe’s face is twisted in anguish, and his fingers are clawing unconsciously at the sheets. His body arches in tension as if electrified. “No,” he begs hoarsely, and he sounds so very young. “Please, no.”  


“I’m sorry,” she whispers, flooded with self-loathing. _What have I done?_ “Poe, I’m so, so sorry.”  


Doctor Kalonia flies into the room, but is pulled up short by General Organa, who pushes past her. Rey thinks she must have sensed them through the Force, and is immensely grateful for someone who might be able to comprehend.  


“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she confesses, her vision blurred by tears.  


“You meant to help,” the general says, taking Rey’s place by the bed. “He’ll understand.”  


“It doesn’t matter what I meant! It matters what I _did!_ He’s _suffering,_ General—so very badly, with every dark, ugly feeling I can name, all plucked from his memories and twisted and amplified. I thought I could ease it, but I didn’t know how, and in trying I did the very same thing that _monster_ did to him!”  


Belatedly she realizes what she’s said, and to whom, and she feels even more horrible.  


But Leia Organa did not become the person she is by flinching from adversity. “It’s all right,” she says quietly. “I told you that there is always another point of view, but that isn’t fully true. Some things are not open to interpretation. Kylo Ren is my son Ben, and he _is_ a monster now. And I knew Poe’s parents once, when they fought alongside us in the Rebel Alliance, so in some ways it feels like he’s mine as well. I should have sensed his pain, or at least expected it. But I’m here now, and even if I don’t have your strength with the Force, I do have something to offer.”  


She takes Poe’s hand in both of hers, gently loosening the fist he’s clenched, and breathes deeply.  


No one speaks for an age. Slowly, the monitors begin to settle into a more normal rhythm, and Poe’s body slumps as the tension drains from him. Rey watches his face and hates herself for the tears that slip from his closed eyes.  


“You’re a Jedi too,” Finn whispers, in awe.  


General Organa shakes her head, and it’s clear that what she’s done took no small effort. “I never trained the way my brother did. I never wanted it. Whether that decision was right or wrong isn’t possible to say, but it’s what happened. I only asked him to teach me basic control. Just in case.”  


Poe mumbles something she doesn’t understand as his handsome features smooth out into sleep. “Yavi,” the general explains. “The language of his home planet.”  


“Does he…think he’s home?” Finn asks. “Is that what you did for him?”  


She gives a small, wistful smile. “I didn’t try to influence his mind. I simply sent him an image. A tree that grew next to his bedroom window.”  


The degree of familiarity she displays is a surprise to Rey. “You knew him that well as a young child.”  


“Only from a distance. His mother’s been gone for many years, and it’s been some time since I spoke to his father, but I see them in his eyes every day. This fight is in his blood as much as it’s in mine.”  


They are a mother-son pair in their own way, Rey thinks, and is grateful for it. They are all three of them adrift, but at least Poe has Leia Organa.  
“You all have each other,” the general says, and Rey flinches, realizing her thoughts must have been floating right on the surface. “Hold onto that.”

 

Poe comes back to himself in stages, one sense at a time. He feels the bed, smells the chemicals, hears the muted buzz of machines and soft voices. By the time he can work up the energy to open his eyes, enough memory has trickled in to make him dread the prospect.  


But he’s not a coward. A mess, but not a coward.  


The lights are blessedly dim, and only Rey is in view, sitting in a chair with her knees drawn up to her chin. He manages a few slow blinks to clear some of the blur from his vision, and she gives him one of the saddest smiles he’s ever seen.  


Sensing that he’s missed something important, he turns his head toward the other bed, where Finn sits. Finn doesn’t look sad, exactly, and he’s not angry the way he was earlier. He’s…worried, maybe.  


“How long was I out?” Poe mumbles, still disoriented. He feels raw, like his skin’s been scrubbed away and every nerve is exposed.  


“It’s evening,” Finn says in response. “Dr. Kalonia says you needed all of that and more. You remember this morning?”  


“When I got here? A little.” Enough, anyway. He pushes himself gingerly into a more vertical position. “So how many people are pissed at me?”  


“Nobody, Poe.”  


It’s morphed into pity, then. Even better. But the hurt is still there, he knows, even if Finn isn’t admitting to it. “I wasn’t—it wasn’t on purpose. I just…couldn’t.” _Can’t._  


“Couldn’t do what?” Finn’s voice is unbearably gentle.  


_Anything._ “Sleep. Eat. Turn off my brain. Forget about all the _wrong_ in my life and in the galaxy.”  


In his periphery Poe sees Rey’s shoulders tremble, and when he looks, her eyes are flooded with tears. “What is it?” he asks softly. “Is it me? Am I hurting you?” And wouldn’t that just cap the whole thing off nicely? He knows Jedi can sense feelings through the Force; if his screwed-up psyche is causing her pain—  


She shakes her head vehemently. “It was me,” she whispers, face flushed with shame. “ _I_ hurt _you_ , and I hate myself for it. I could feel how miserable you were, and I wanted to help, so I—touched your mind.”  


Oh.  


“So it wasn’t a nightmare.” He’s beginning to remember, and comprehend. “I thought—”  


“—that it was _him._ ” Rey’s tears spill over. “I couldn’t control it the way I expected. I… don’t expect you to forgive me right away, but I hope in time…”  


Part of him is screaming to run, or maybe just hyperventilate until he passes out again, but he forces that fear down. This _isn’t_ her fault. “Come here,” he murmurs, reaching for her. Tentatively, she sits on the edge of his bed, and he squeezes her hand with what passes for all of his strength. “It’s okay. You can’t reopen a wound that hadn’t closed in the first place.”  


“But—”  


“I’m serious. It hurt, but things have been bad enough that it wasn’t any different from everything else that’s been going on in my head for the past few days.” He attempts a smile. “You really do get points for trying.”  


They make him feel old, both of them, even though her hand is callused from more hard labor than he’ll do in a lifetime. Everything makes him feel old, or maybe just used up, spent.  


“Listen, can I ask you something?” The question sounds ridiculous already, but the fear has been skittering around like an insect in the back of his mind for days and he needs to stamp it out. “When you were in my head, could you see—Is it just my thoughts in there, or does he have a way back in?”  


Rey looks taken aback, as if she hadn’t considered the concept. She thinks for a moment, lips pursed, before answering. “He’s not still reaching into either of us,” she says, and he winces against a fresh stab of guilt, because of _course_ she was interrogated too and yet isn’t falling apart. “I think he…manipulated your thoughts and memories in a way that may be difficult to set aside. But I don’t believe he can touch us here and now.”  


It’s an immense relief, and Poe doesn’t bother to disguise it, sagging back against the head of the bed. “I don’t know much about the Force besides legend or scripture,” he confesses. “It isn’t what I expected it to be. I guess it was short-sighted of me not to fully realize what the dark side can do, not just in general but to _me._ I’m…rethinking my worldview a little.” His lips twist, but it’s nothing close to a grin. “But hey, it’s good to know that I’m probably not going to give away any more critical intelligence.”  


“Poe, they never got BB-8,” Finn says urgently. “And you didn’t _give_ away a damn thing in the first place—he ripped it out of you. That _isn’t_ your fault.”  


“Rey didn’t—”  


“I’m different.” Rey’s gaze remains on their joined hands, and he can’t read her expression. “I’ve always known it. Now I suppose I know why, at least. But I’m quite sure it doesn’t make me better or wiser than you.” She lifts her head. “It could just as easily have been me. A single thought in a different direction and he could have had the map.”  


Poe’s not sure he believes that, but he appreciates her attempt. “I wish that had been the only secret I’d had to protect.”  


That isn’t what he’d intended to say; apparently exhaustion has taken his verbal filters offline.  


“What do you mean?”  


He hasn’t dared voice it before, but there’s no going back now. “Starkiller was locked on this system,” he forces out, feeling a sting behind his eyes and a cold knot in his chest. “They knew we were here. Where do you suppose they got that information?”  


Comprehension overtakes Finn’s features. “ _Stars,_ Poe,” he breathes, stunned. “You think _you_ gave up the location of the base.”  


Any nuance that may lie in that phrasing is lost underneath the weight of Poe’s misery. He can’t look at either of them, so he pulls his hand free and wraps his arms around his knees, wanting to be small, wanting to be _gone_. “This fight…it’s all I know how to do,” he confesses. “It’s what my parents taught me. Everything I’ve ever done—everything they sacrificed for—was almost destroyed because I couldn’t hold out—”  


_“No.”_  


Suddenly Finn is within his space, hands gripping his arms, and he glances up out of reflex. “That is _not_ what happened. _Never_ believe that again.” The younger man’s voice is insistent and severe. “The general asked me a couple of days ago if I knew anything about pursuit tactics. I don’t, but she explained why she was asking. Intel was reviewing flight logs from Takodana—one of the starfighters was followed by a First Order scout, a prototype that confuses sensors and shows up as a solar anomaly. He couldn’t have known it was there, and I guess he forgot to do some kind of maneuver to scan visually—”  


“A fence check.” Part of Poe’s mind is scrambling; the other part is still trying to do his job. “Who?”  


“A Lieutenant…Niv, I think?”  


“Niv…was new. Niv’s dead now. Ello was his wingman, should have caught it. Ello’s dead too.” His chest aches, his head aches from everything he’s been holding in for so long. “So many dead. I killed thousands myself on Starkiller. How many of them could have turned out like you?”  


Finn is thrown for a moment, but only a moment. “There was no other choice,” he says. “I was with them for almost my entire life and never heard more than a rumor about anyone else trying to leave, or even wanting to. The First Order is ruthless and cold and very, very efficient. They train stormtroopers to do exactly what they’re told. They built Starkiller to do exactly what it did. They were going to use it soon no matter what. And we stopped them, Poe, don’t you get that? You stopped them.”  


“Starkiller would have destroyed the Resistance.” Rey’s voice is stronger now as well. “You were its salvation. Both of you.”  


He’s still reeling, but one critical point is starting to become clear. “I didn’t lead them here,” he whispers.  


“Poe,” Rey says softly. “You can’t have made your parents anything but proud.”  


That’s the thought that breaks him at last. The first sob tears free of his throat in defiance of all his efforts, and after that he surrenders, trembling from the tidal wave of all the pain he’s carried for days. He cries for his comrades lost to space and the cause; for the millions of people who looked up one day to see the end of their world lighting the sky; for the thousands of children who have never known anything but steel and isolation and intolerance, who have been taught only to kill and never to feel; for the unbelievable courage of the one who broke free, who saved him and is still saving him; for the girl who has never had a friend in the galaxy yet somehow knows exactly what a friend should be.  


For his mother. For the mother who lost her son to the darkness and her husband to her son. For himself, the man who can’t make sense of anything unless he’s chasing the stars.  


Finn’s hold is weak, and his is no better, but they’re enmeshed, and Rey clasps their shoulders, anchoring them. He feels the dampness of tears that aren’t his own against his shirt. For a measureless time, they remain there—and Poe knows that nothing is different, objectively, but for the first time in days it feels like there’s light in the world.  


“Thank you,” he whispers to them both, fumbling to free one hand so he can cover Rey’s with it. 

 

Jess is reinstalling the last fastener on _Blue Three_ ’s maintenance access panel when Snap approaches her. “Was thinking about stopping by the medbay on my way to the mess.”  


“Good call.” Jess quickly stows her tools and wipes her hands on a rag. “Lead the way.”  


When they arrive, however, an undersized, hyper-vigilant sentry is posted outside the door to Poe’s room. “Bee, it’s us,” Snap wheedles.  


The binary reply he gets is terse: DameronPoe is sleeping and not to be disturbed. “Okay, but he’s all right, isn’t he?” There’s a hint of residual tension in Jess’s voice. Snap can’t blame her; he hasn’t forgotten how their day started, either.  


A hesitant affirmative whistle is the response. If Snap didn’t know any better, he’d suspect that BB-8 might have been more rattled by this whole thing than any of the humans.  


“We’ll stop back by after dinner, then.”  


And they do, only to be met by the same status report an hour later. “Bee, come _on,_ ” Jess whines. “Just let us look in on him. We promise not to wake him up.”  


With a resigned beep, the droid rolls aside. Jess slides the door open a crack and peers inside. Almost immediately she shuts it again. “How much adorable sappiness are you prepared to handle?” she asks.  


Snap scowls. “Don’t mess with me.” He shoulders his way past her for his own peek—and now he sees her point.  


The two beds in the room have been pushed together and laid out fully flat. Poe is curled up on his side facing Finn, who lies on his stomach with one arm under his head. Their hands are loosely linked through the siderails of the beds. At their feet, stretched across both beds, is Rey. All three appear—at least to Snap—to be relaxed in sleep.  


“They’re killing me with this,” Jess says under her breath. “Bee, take a holo.”  


Poe’s droid blats indignantly.  


“I’m not going to blackmail him! Kriff, I love the guy to pieces, and he _needs_ this, so settle down. It’s just…really, _really_ cute.”  


Snap shakes his head and steps back, slinging an arm around Jess’s shoulders. “Come on, Testor. Let’s go booby-trap Numb’s locker or something.”

 

A dull thudding against the durasteel door alerts Finn to a visitor’s arrival at his newly-assigned quarters. He opens the door to a blinding smile and can’t help but reflect it.  


“Big day,” Poe greets him, stepping inside. “Sleep all right?”  


“Yeah, pretty good.” Finn’s still adjusting to the concept of having his own space. It’s something he’s never had before, and there are moments when he’s not wild about all the quiet. But it’s temporary; the Resistance is packing up to move operations to a new base soon, and Poe—whose room is only three doors down at the moment—has already, tentatively, offered to bunk with him at the new base if he chooses to stay with them. “How about you?”  


“Not bad.” And he’s fairly certain Poe’s being honest about that. They’ve been talking more, often at the end of the day when one or both need a little help to slow down their thoughts for the night, and Finn knows Poe’s had a couple of long conversations with both General Organa and Dr. Kalonia. Whether as a result of any of these, or simply of time, the Resistance’s ace pilot has reclaimed most of the faith and confidence he’d mislaid. He speaks and carries himself the way Finn had seen him from the beginning. “You ready to set a new personal best for walking distance?”  


“Absolutely.” Finn shakes his head. “Still can’t quite believe she’s going to find Luke Skywalker.”  


“I know. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s Rey.” Poe clasps his hands in front of him, his smile turning thoughtful. “We need this, I think. All of us. Even just the sendoff. After everything that’s happened lately, we need to remind ourselves that there’s more than just a flicker of hope holding us together.”  


Finn studies his friend for a moment. “You’re very much in ‘command’ mode today,” he comments, gesturing with one hand. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in that uniform before.”  


With a roll of his eyes, Poe spreads his hands and turns in a circle. “Not flattering in any way, are they? It’s better than armor, but I avoid the greens whenever possible. They’re the most formal uniform I’ve got, though, and like I said, today’s big.”  


“Is that your rank?” Finn points.  


“That’s right. The symbol is for Commander, the color is for army.” Poe detaches the small rectangular badge from the fabric over his heart and holds it out to Finn. “I was Navy when I was in the NRDF, but I do a little more than flying these days, so they had to choose one.”  


Finn brushes his thumb over the metal, deceptively light for all it represents. A few days ago, the thought of wearing a uniform again had been overwhelming to him. Does he want to bear the weight of such expectations? Is he prepared to stay in this fight, no matter where it leads?  


Now, he’s sure. He doesn’t know how well he’ll continue to hold their respect, but these are his comrades, and he’ll stand with them.  


He hands the insignia back. “Hey, Poe?”  


“Yeah, buddy?”  


“How does somebody get one of those uniforms?”  


Poe’s brow creases. “You mean, where’s the quartermaster? Over in Building 4, by the mess.”  


“No, I mean…” Finn takes a steadying breath. “I want to know how to earn the right to wear one. To be one of you.”  


For a moment, Poe’s gaze searches his, as if trying to confirm his intent. The pilot must find what he’s looking for, because the smile that dawns across his features is a brilliant blend of pride, relief, and joy.  


“My friend,” he says simply, “you earned it a while ago. Stay right here.”  


He’s gone in an instant, leaving Finn to worry that he may have just derailed their timetable for getting out to the airfield. Fortunately, it’s only a couple of minutes before Poe comes barreling back through the door, a second olive-and-tan uniform in hand. “It’s my spare. We’ll have to let the generals figure out what rank you should be later, but at least we already know my clothes fit you.”  


Finn blinks at the offering. “I can’t just…”  


“Well, no, you can’t _just_. There’s an oath, and usually a party afterwards, at which you should only drink things that I explicitly tell you are safe, trust me. But we can do all that after Rey takes off.” The wickedness in Poe’s grin fades into sincerity, with the hint of a plea. “Go ahead and put it on. You’ll make a great day even better.”  


Still unable to raise his arms fully above his head, Finn relies on Poe’s help to tug the tunic into place. The fabric is a little scratchy, but it moves well enough. He wears the boots he was assigned a week ago—“there’s no such thing as uniform boots around here, just whatever we can find that fits”—and tries to convince himself that he’s not a giant fraud.  


“That damn tunic’s never looked better.” Beaming, Poe claps a hand onto his shoulder. “Come on, let’s go see our girl off in style.”  


It’s a longer walk than he remembers, since he was in far better shape the last time he made it. Poe matches his uneven pace, smiling at the scattered personnel they pass along the way and greeting them by name. Most of them include Finn in their answering smiles and nods, and the tightness in his chest begins to ease.  


He can do this. He can belong here.  


Right now, though, he needs to get off his feet for a minute.  


Poe ushers him to a corner of the hangar where the crews do cockpit maintenance and offers him a choice of cannibalized Starfighter seats. Finn selects the one whose cushions look the least damaged and is just about to settle in when Rey comes jogging up.  


They’d said their farewells last night, but it’s still nice to hug her again, to see her bright, focused confidence. She’s doing the right thing, and she clearly believes he is too, because she looks his uniform up and down before pressing a kiss to his cheek.  


“You never did lie to me,” she whispers in his ear. “You always were with the Resistance. You just didn’t know it yet.”  


He holds her tightly. “Come back safe.”  


She steps back to embrace Poe as well, and Finn allows himself a moment to revel in his gratitude that he’s careened into not one but two amazing friends who make both him and each other better. Rey is more open, Poe is more centered, and he himself is more…everything.  


“You’ve got enough rations?”  


Rey fixes Poe with a disbelieving look that’s fond and exasperated at once. “Do you think that wasn’t my first priority?”  


“I’m just saying, the _Falcon_ ’s galley probably works about as well as the rest of the ship, and my abuelo taught me to never let a friend go hungry.” Poe presses a kiss to her hairline. “Check in when you can.”  


“I will.”  


“Okay. Go shape the galaxy.”  


Finn leans back in his appropriated seat as she crosses the tarmac to General Organa. Half the Resistance appears to be milling around, making themselves busy with minor tasks or just loitering to witness the momentous departure. A couple of Red Squadron pilots gesture at their commander, who hesitates, glancing over at Finn.  


“Go ahead.” Finn nods toward them. “I’d like to stay out of the crowd for this.”  


“You sure?”  


“I’m sure. You can be their leader and my friend at the same time.”  


It’s the kind of thing he can’t imagine ever saying as a ‘trooper. It’s a new life he’s beginning, and for the first time, he’s more excited than afraid of what comes next.  


As the _Falcon_ rises into D’Qar’s morning sky, Finn turns his face to the sun, closes his eyes, and smiles.

*** THE END ***

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Tumblr under the same username; still learning my way around, but please come yell at me about Star Wars/Trek/Gate there.


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